The Demographic Consequences of Gender Selection Technology

Over the last several years highly accurate methods of gender selection before conception have been developed. Given that strong preferences for gender variety in offspring have been documented for the U.S. We move beyond bio-ethical and moral considerations and ask what the demographic consequences of gender selection technology could be. Lacking variation across space and time in access to this technology, we estimate a dynamic programming model of fertility decisions with microdata on fertility histories from the National Survey of Family Growth. After recovering preferences for gender variety, we simulate the introduction of this technology. While this technology can reduce fertility by allowing parents e¢ ciently reach their preferred gender mix, it could also increase fertility. This is because without this technology, many parents may opt not to have another baby given the uncertainty about its gender. Preliminary results suggest that these two effects operate simultaneously, but on net, gender selection technology ends up increasing the total fertility rate by about ten percent in the steady state.